The system administrator deleted 180 virtual servers of his employer, not wanting to put up with unfair dismissal, in his opinion. The company suffered huge losses, and the administrator himself was sent to prison for almost three years.
The system administrator was offended
Singapore - based company NCS suffered heavy losses as a result of the actions of its former system administrator, who decided to take revenge on her for his dismissal. According to the Channel News Asia (CNA) agency, the administrator made his way into the company's virtual infrastructure and destroyed 180 virtual servers in its composition.
According to CNA, the incident was the result of the actions of a 39-year-old specialist named Kandula Nagaraju (Kandula Nagaraju), a native of India. The amount of loss caused by NCS's virtual "visit" reached 918 thousand Singapore dollars, or about $680 thousand at the exchange rate as of June 13, 2024.
The agency writes that Nagaraju was "embarrassed and upset" by his dismissal, as, in his opinion, he was unfairly deprived of his job. He is confident that he not only proved himself well, but also "made a significant contribution" (made good contributions) to the work of NCS.
NCS seems to have a different opinion about Nagaraju's abilities. He worked for the company from November 2021 to October 2022 and was part of a 20-person team that managed the computer quality assurance (QA) system at NCS.
According to CNA, Nagaraju's career path at NCS ended so abruptly for a reason. He was fired precisely for the low quality of performance of the duties assigned to him.
No virtual barriers
NCS offers its customers information, communication and technology services. In particular, it is engaged in testing new software before its launch using the system that Nagaraju serviced. NCS representatives told the agency that this system is "completely autonomous "(standalone test system). It consisted of approximately 180 virtual servers, and no confidential information was stored on them.
Meanwhile, Nagaraju managed to get into this system from outside, and from another country. After being dismissed from NCS, he was unable to find another job in Singapore and was forced to return to India, from where he connected to the system using an administrator account from his personal laptop.
In total, Nagaraju connected to the" autonomous " system six times – he did this between January 6 and January 17, 2023. In February of the same year, Nagaraju returned to Singapore, finding a new job. He rented a room from a former NCS colleague and started using his home Wi-Fi to access the NCS system.
During January and February 2023, he wrote several scripts to delete virtual servers. In March 2023, it connected to the NCS quality control system 13 times. On March 18 and 19, 2023, it launched a dedicated service to remove 180 virtual servers in the system. His script was written so that the servers were deleted one at a time, not all at once.
The next day, the NCS administrators found that the system was unavailable and tried to restore it, but failed. They also made sure that all 180 virtual servers were deleted.
Inevitable punishment
On April 11, 2023, the NCS completed its internal investigation. She had a list of several external IP addresses discovered by the security service, and it was handed over to the police for further searches.
Law enforcement officers quickly reached out to Nagaraja and confiscated his laptop, in the memory of which they found a script that he used to delete servers on the NCS network. The police also checked Nagaraju's search history and found that he had searched the Internet for instructions on writing such scripts.
As a result, Nagaraju became a suspect for unauthorized access to the NCS computer infrastructure and materials on the company's network. On June 10, 2024, the court found him guilty of this crime and handed down a sentence of two years and eight months in prison.
No need to fire system administrators
There are many cases like the one in which Nagaraju appears all over the world. For example, at the end of 2023, CNews covered the story of a former school sysadmin at a school in New Jersey (USA). He took revenge on the ex-employer for his dismissal by disabling a number of IT systems of the educational institution, using the powers still not revoked at the time of termination of the employment contract. The "saboteur" admitted his guilt in court. He faced a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a large fine.
In March 2017 CNews wrote that the system administrator dismissed from Lucchese Bootmaker company brought down its server in revenge, simultaneously deleting all the files necessary for its recovery. This stopped the work of the entire company, which has been producing cowboy boots for almost 150 years. As a result, the server was still restored by a third-party contractor.
In September 2022, CNews told the story of a fired American system administrator who caused real chaos in the IT infrastructure of his former employer. He had hoped to get an offer to return to his position so that he could "save" the company from hackers, but instead received the threat of jail time and a large fine.
But sometimes it also happens that employees who are on staff can also arrange a virtual diversion. In May 2024, CNews wrote that a Russian engineer who worked for Rosseti was able to use his personal laptop "at the touch of a button" to deprive residents of almost 40 settlements of electricity. He was caught and convicted, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he managed to get off with a suspended sentence. However, he was left without a laptop-the state confiscated it.
The system administrator was offended
Singapore - based company NCS suffered heavy losses as a result of the actions of its former system administrator, who decided to take revenge on her for his dismissal. According to the Channel News Asia (CNA) agency, the administrator made his way into the company's virtual infrastructure and destroyed 180 virtual servers in its composition.
According to CNA, the incident was the result of the actions of a 39-year-old specialist named Kandula Nagaraju (Kandula Nagaraju), a native of India. The amount of loss caused by NCS's virtual "visit" reached 918 thousand Singapore dollars, or about $680 thousand at the exchange rate as of June 13, 2024.
The agency writes that Nagaraju was "embarrassed and upset" by his dismissal, as, in his opinion, he was unfairly deprived of his job. He is confident that he not only proved himself well, but also "made a significant contribution" (made good contributions) to the work of NCS.
NCS seems to have a different opinion about Nagaraju's abilities. He worked for the company from November 2021 to October 2022 and was part of a 20-person team that managed the computer quality assurance (QA) system at NCS.
According to CNA, Nagaraju's career path at NCS ended so abruptly for a reason. He was fired precisely for the low quality of performance of the duties assigned to him.
No virtual barriers
NCS offers its customers information, communication and technology services. In particular, it is engaged in testing new software before its launch using the system that Nagaraju serviced. NCS representatives told the agency that this system is "completely autonomous "(standalone test system). It consisted of approximately 180 virtual servers, and no confidential information was stored on them.
Meanwhile, Nagaraju managed to get into this system from outside, and from another country. After being dismissed from NCS, he was unable to find another job in Singapore and was forced to return to India, from where he connected to the system using an administrator account from his personal laptop.
In total, Nagaraju connected to the" autonomous " system six times – he did this between January 6 and January 17, 2023. In February of the same year, Nagaraju returned to Singapore, finding a new job. He rented a room from a former NCS colleague and started using his home Wi-Fi to access the NCS system.
During January and February 2023, he wrote several scripts to delete virtual servers. In March 2023, it connected to the NCS quality control system 13 times. On March 18 and 19, 2023, it launched a dedicated service to remove 180 virtual servers in the system. His script was written so that the servers were deleted one at a time, not all at once.
The next day, the NCS administrators found that the system was unavailable and tried to restore it, but failed. They also made sure that all 180 virtual servers were deleted.
Inevitable punishment
On April 11, 2023, the NCS completed its internal investigation. She had a list of several external IP addresses discovered by the security service, and it was handed over to the police for further searches.
Law enforcement officers quickly reached out to Nagaraja and confiscated his laptop, in the memory of which they found a script that he used to delete servers on the NCS network. The police also checked Nagaraju's search history and found that he had searched the Internet for instructions on writing such scripts.
As a result, Nagaraju became a suspect for unauthorized access to the NCS computer infrastructure and materials on the company's network. On June 10, 2024, the court found him guilty of this crime and handed down a sentence of two years and eight months in prison.
No need to fire system administrators
There are many cases like the one in which Nagaraju appears all over the world. For example, at the end of 2023, CNews covered the story of a former school sysadmin at a school in New Jersey (USA). He took revenge on the ex-employer for his dismissal by disabling a number of IT systems of the educational institution, using the powers still not revoked at the time of termination of the employment contract. The "saboteur" admitted his guilt in court. He faced a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a large fine.
In March 2017 CNews wrote that the system administrator dismissed from Lucchese Bootmaker company brought down its server in revenge, simultaneously deleting all the files necessary for its recovery. This stopped the work of the entire company, which has been producing cowboy boots for almost 150 years. As a result, the server was still restored by a third-party contractor.
In September 2022, CNews told the story of a fired American system administrator who caused real chaos in the IT infrastructure of his former employer. He had hoped to get an offer to return to his position so that he could "save" the company from hackers, but instead received the threat of jail time and a large fine.
But sometimes it also happens that employees who are on staff can also arrange a virtual diversion. In May 2024, CNews wrote that a Russian engineer who worked for Rosseti was able to use his personal laptop "at the touch of a button" to deprive residents of almost 40 settlements of electricity. He was caught and convicted, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he managed to get off with a suspended sentence. However, he was left without a laptop-the state confiscated it.
